Control Company Costs
Mind the Gap: How Finance Automation Helps Close Gaps in Time, Spend and Knowledge
There are key elements your finance automation process should cover – reimburse employees and pay suppliers promptly, keep all spend compliant and avoid waste to keep costs under control.
It’s not always that easy when manual business spend processes are disjointed, clunky or outdated.
Let’s look at the ways finance automation can help you bridge some of the most common gaps, develop a more streamlined, cost-efficient process, improve your employees’ experience and achieve your business goals.
Close the Gaps in Your Expense Process
1. The time between spending and reimbursement
There are many reasons for an unacceptably long time lag between the moment of spend and reimbursement. It could be an employee forgetting to submit their expenses, or obtain the correct receipt, or an approval manager’s absence from the office. Manual processes that require physical receipts and data input slow things down.
Businesses worldwide using an SAP Concur solution experienced a 32% reduction in the time taken to approve expenses after automating1 .
2.Up-to-date knowledge and understanding of policies
It’s impossible for employees and managers to keep on top of unclear or complex spending policies. Gaps in knowledge about what is and isn’t allowed cause stress as employees grapple with fears about the potential of committing fraud or not being reimbursed and approvers struggle to stay up to date and compliant.
Concur Expense allows the auto-population of claims based on credit card charges, photos of receipts, digital receipts and itineraries. Policies are inbuilt and automatically applied, meaning 100% of receipts are audited for policy compliance, receipt substantiation and fraud/anomaly patterns.
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See more3.VAT disqualification and missed reclaim opportunities
When receipts are not checked for VAT status, there’s a gap between what could be claimed and what is squandered. It’s easy to see why the complexity puts approvers off even trying to check for VAT – constantly changing tax regulations cause uncertainty and fear and many finance teams just bury their heads in the sand.
SAP Concur solutions audits 100% of receipts for VAT compliance, resulting in the possible halving of VAT disqualification when using our tools.
Close the Gaps in Your Travel Process
1.Difference between negotiated and public fares
Employees like autonomy when it comes to travel booking, with many having preferred airlines or hotel chains, but this can lead to overspending and missed opportunities for corporate savings.
With Concur Travel employees can view negotiated and published fares in an easy-to-read table, with convenient colour-coded indicators that show which options are within policy and which aren’t. As a result, worldwide businesses with SAP Concur solutions in place realised 11% cost savings through supplier negotiated rates and discounts1 .
2.Time between an emergency or change of plans and action
Lack of knowledge about the safety of certain neighbourhoods at the time of booking a hotel and not being able to communicate with them about potential live and ongoing local emergencies, creates a very real gap in your Duty of Care obligations.
TripIt Pro offers Neighbourhood Safety Scores whilst TripLink brings bookings and itineraries into one place, so you always know where your employees are.
3.Disparity between individual carbon emissions and business sustainability goals
Business travellers want to do the right thing but don’t always know what that ‘thing’ is when it comes to the moment of booking travel.
29% of businesses worldwide say helping reduce paper waste/carbon footprint is a top benefit of implementing an automated Travel and Expense (T&E) management solution1 . Concur Travel allows you to guide employees to the most sustainable option and turnkey reports help you track travel emissions and manage key sustainability KPIs.
Close the Gaps in Your Invoice Process
1.Time between invoice being raised and supplier being paid
The manual routing, approval and payment of invoices leaves room for error and delays. Consistently paying invoices late can have a negative impact on your reputation and can damage your relationships with suppliers.
Concur Invoice allows you to approve invoices on-the-go from a mobile, giving you full visibility into where an invoice is in the process, including automated reminders to help eradicate late payment fees and take advantage of early-pay discounts. Finance and AP teams using SAP Concur T&E solutions save an estimated 148 hours a week1 .
2. Lack of knowledge about the supply chain
Without clear visibility into your suppliers’ rates and payment terms, you might be missing an opportunity to boost cashflow with early-pay discounts or alternative suppliers.
With Concur Invoice, you can receive real-time reports using dashboards to keep you up to date on what’s being spent and help you negotiate better rates with your preferred suppliers.
3. Inaccuracies between purchase orders, invoices and receivables
Duplicate, suspicious or inaccurate invoices pose a real threat to cashflow, but checking supplier details, matching invoices to purchase orders and checking goods have been received is a constant struggle for many finance teams.
Concur Invoice offers three-way matching, so purchase orders, invoices and receivables can be checked against each other for improved accuracy. With Purchase Request, managers have the power to approve or reject spending requests prior to a purchase order being created and before money is spent. Worldwide businesses using SAP Concur solutions realised a 26% reduction in budget overspending because of increased visibility into their spending data1 .
SAP Concur Solutions: Bridging the Spending Gaps
Finance automation helps you close the gaps that can cause business spend to fall through the cracks, with employees wasting time and suppliers losing trust.
With SAP Concur solutions, you can not only bridge your current cost control, time and knowledge gaps but also identify where new ones are happening. By automating finance management, you know your cash is under control, so you can turn your attention to the strategies, innovations and ideas that bring more of it through the door.
Learn how to close the spend data gaps that could be slowing your business down by booking a demo of Concur Expense, Invoice, or Travel, or contact us for more information .